The Woman In Question
by Isodriel
Summary: Post NFA. While Buffy is starting over with the man who calls himself The Immortal, Spike is trying to forget about her and move on with his own undead excuse for a life... that is, until a friend offers him some good advice and a free ride to Italy. BS.
1. Cold Comfort

**Author's Note: **Since I've already devoted two fics to B/A, I wanted to mix things up a little and do a B/S fic, since I'm not a "shipper" either way and let's face it, I've got a major thing for James Marsters when he's in Spike-mode (not sure so sure about him in any other mode, but oh well). The fic title is based on the AtS Season 5 episode title (obviously), BA-ers have been warned and as always, reviews make my day.

**1. Cold Comfort **

Gary Rowlands knew there was something wrong with the guy sitting next to him at the bar. Somewhere deep within his large body, worry ticked in a discomforting rhythm and told him to put more distance between himself and the man to his right. But he couldn't pin it down, couldn't put his finger on what was wrong, and through the haze of thoughts made sluggish by alocohol he couldn't even seem to care.

"Saved the world," the man was saying. His words weren't really slurred, but they were colored with an odd accent that made half of what he said unintelligible anyway. No one else in the bar could tell that he was stone cold sober. "Saved the whole damn world, I did. Twice. At _least_. An' look at me now. Supposed to be a real bleedin' boy, and instead I'm … not anything. Nothing. Dead meat on legs."

He chuckled half-heartedly, gazing dispiritedly at the surface of his drink. "And then of course there's the soul, but that thing's just … floatin' around in there. Taking up space. Bloody useless, is what it is. Can't even give it away, or sell it to anyone besides the Big Man With Horns. And I'm not really jostling to see him before I have to."

He was silent for a long moment, before picking up an apparently different thread of thought and continuing his rant. "Better off than Gunn, though. Poor sod didn't even last the ten minutes that Blue predicted for 'im. And Blue, she's long gone. Just … whoosh, an' she was gone." He blinked blearily and his entire body slumped just a little more towards the bar counter. "Just me and the poofter left now," he muttered. "Not that he stuck around. Paraded off to see Dog Girl first chance he got, didn't he? Hope she takes another scratch at him. Git deserves it."

Gary attempted a comforting pat on the man's shoulder and missed, nearly falling off his stool. "And I'm alone," the man continued, apparently oblivious to Gary's failed gesture of solidarity. "Haven't been alone in a while actually, though I've felt like it since … forever, to be honest. Was alone before I met Dru, alone while I was with her, and sure as hell alone after that. Only time I felt like I wasn't the only bloody person left on the planet was with … her."

The softening of his tone and the accompanying slight tilt of his head were surprisingly eloquent. They indicated the loss of something acutely and painfully beautiful – or perhaps beautifully painful.

"Not that I'm fooling myself any longer about any of it. I was her drug of choice, her shameful little addiction. She never thought about me the way she did about Captain Forehead. Fat lot of good it did her in the end; he's moved on now, apparently. And he's not even ashamed of it." His fist clenched briefly, and then he shook his head as thought trying to clear it. "Point is – to her, I was just a substandard variety of cold comfort. And to me, she was…" he sighed. "Everything. All of it. The one, the right girl, the love of my life. That whole song and dance." His laugh carried the bitter twang of self-disgust. "And d'you want to hear the saddest part of it all?"

Gary nodded absently. His gaze had momentarily focused on the mirror hanging on the wall behind the bar counter, and suddenly the realization of what had been bothering him earlier hit him like a metal bat to his skull. His own reflection was right there, looking back at him morosely. But in the scene being portrayed in the mirror, there was no one sitting next to him. No one at all.

The stranger slipped unsteadily out of his seat and paused to stare at the mirror in which he simply did not exist. "The saddest part," he said, speaking only to himself in a tone that was suddenly very steady, "is that she still is."

---

Buffy had to hand it to them. For a pair of newborns, they were putting up one hell of a fight. She ducked to narrowly avoid a high kick from one of them and aimed a quick jab at his chest with her stake. He slipped easily out of the way and came back at her with a backhanded blow to the face.

She retreated a few steps to get her bearings, massaging her jaw with her free hand. "Where the hell did they learn to fight like this?"

Dawn would've shrugged if she hadn't been busy fending off the second vampire, who was grappling with her in an attempt to get hold of her stake. "Maybe they took karate classes while they were alive," she said nervously. The vampire managed to knock the stake out of her hand and as Dawn dove to pick it up, the vampire caught her around the waist and had her in a swift headlock before she could get away from him. "Uh, Buffy? A little help here!"

Buffy turned in Dawn's direction and the vampire she was fighting took the opportunity to punch her in the jaw again. "Li uccideremo!" he crowed triumphantly, and the other vampire bared his fangs in a malicious grin, apparently agreeing with him.

Buffy rolled her eyes. "Oh, please. Like we haven't heard that before." She lunged forward suddenly and the vampire she was facing barely had time to be surprised before she caught his head between her hands and gave it one short, sharp twist. He was dust before his body hit the ground.

She approached the other one, casually swinging her stake. "Still think you're going to kill us?"

"Sì," he hissed, tightening his grip on Dawn's neck. He was clearly planning on delivering some kind of evil villain speech before sinking his teeth victoriously into the Slayer's younger sister, but sadly, this plan was foiled when the sound of an arrow whistling through the air was followed by his immediate disintegration.

---

Both of the Summers sisters turned around to see a large and well-muscled man, clearly a native Italian, holding a crossbow and grinning at them. He wore an expensive-looking ink black suit with a vivid crimson handkerchief tucked into the breast pocket. "Buona sera, signorina Summers."

"Hello, Ciccio," Buffy said wearily. Dawn had already run ahead and, with a brief relieved smile in Ciccio's direction, slipped into the limousine waiting for them outside of the graveyard. Buffy followed more slowly, with Ciccio walking barely two steps behind her and keeping an extremely alert eye on her the entire time – presumably to make sure that she wasn't attacked again.

Buffy hadn't expected to find anyone besides Dawn waiting in the spacious backseat of the limousine, but she was wrong. _He_ was there, leaning back comfortably into the white leather-clad seating, giving her that penetrating look she knew so well with those impossibly blue eyes. In some lights they were a darker ocean blue, and in others they were the pale blue of floating ice. Collar-length hair the color of corn silk framed a gorgeous face in curls that were just messy enough to be perfect.

There was no doubt that appearance-wise at least, the man who called himself The Immortal was on an entirely different plane.

And even though the mere sight of him was enough to melt away some of her irritation, it didn't dispel it entirely. "I thought we'd been over this, Tom. I _don't _need to be rescued from vampires, or demons, or … any other non-human ugly thing that needs to be killed. It's my job, and I can do it without back-up."

She was the only person who called him anything other than The Immortal. He had asked her to give him a simpler name, and she had chosen Tom because the letters were already there and because it had no connections whatsoever to any of her previous lovers.

He smiled wryly and leaned in to giver her a gentle kiss on the mouth. "Just because you _can_ doesn't mean you should," he whispered. "Besides, I am not only sending them out for your sake. The time you spend patrolling the streets is time spent away from _me_, so someone else might as well be doing it for you."

Her laugh turned into a brief gasp as his lips found her neck. "So it's all about you?" she asked, struggling to keep her tone light despite the fact that his hand was wandering slowly along her thigh.

"Oh, yes. I am a selfish being." He pulled back a little to look into her eyes, smiling at the glaze of desire that had settled over them, darkening their irises to a deeper shade of green. "But then, you knew that already."

Dawn, who had nabbed a bowl of fresh strawberries from the limo's miniature fridge, grimaced lightly and turned away to avoid watching the inevitable make-out session between her sister and The Immortal.

Buffy had never been comfortable kissing any of her boyfriends in front of Dawn before, but with 'Tom' she had no such inhibitions. Dawn tried to be happy for her – after all, weren't PDAs the trademark of any passionate relationship? – but in truth she was worried. Because the Buffy that she knew and loved, and the Buffy that The Immortal knew and loved, seemed to be two entirely different people.

And in no love story Dawn had heard or read about was that ever a good thing.


	2. Advice Over A Sea Breeze

**Author's Note: **Shorter than usual, but I haven't had much time to write it and a short chapter is better than no chapter, I guess. Drop a line if it didn't hurt your eyes to read it.

**2. Advice Over A Sea Breeze**

He finished reading his latest piece to a standing ovation. He had become something of a star among the members of the demonic poetry club that held thrice-weekly meetings in one of the hottest bars for non-humans in all of downtown LA, and they all loved his work. His newest poem was about her, of course. They were always about her.

Writing poetry was one of the very few reasons he had left for existing at all, and he clung to it like a drowning man clings to a raft. He poured his grief, his loneliness, his frustration out in words on paper and he read them to strangers who always seemed to recognize something of themselves in his poetry.

And why wouldn't they? Which one of them didn't have a dark side (most of them _only _had dark sides, what with the being evil and soulless), which one of them hadn't once loved and then lost someone? Spike couldn't say he had any friends among the demons who assembled at the bar to hear his poetry, but there was a vague sense of camaraderie there that appealed to him.

On this particular night, he only read one poem before walking off-stage and heading straight for the bar counter. Once in a while someone would give him a congratulatory pat on the back as they passed, but mostly they left him alone with his drink. And that was exactly what he wanted.

So he was less than pleased when a female vampire slid onto the stool next to him and offered, in a voice that was pitched to sound as sultry as possible, to buy him a glass of blood. He gave her the briefest of glances and asked her in no uncertain terms to sod off. She left, clearly insulted, and once again he found himself alone.

For a little while, anyway. Then someone else slid onto the stool that the she-vamp had just vacated.

"Now that, my friend, was just pathetic. I wouldn't want to bring you down any further than you've obviously already sunk, but did you actually take a look at that package deal before sending it back to Lovely Lady Land? Because I've got to tell you: no straight man, undead or otherwise, would turn _that_ down."

Spike turned, ready to tell the owner of the annoyingly cheerful voice to mind his own business, and was confronted by a surprisingly familiar face. "Lorne? What the hell are you doing here?"

"Nice to see you too, sunshine," Lorne said dryly, adjusting the feathered 20's-style hat that kept his face mostly obscured. It was both a fashion statement and a means to anonymity. "And I could ask you the same thing. The ex-boss man said you took off after the big fight. Figured you'd be halfway to the Motherland by now."

Spike was momentarily confused. "You thought I'd be halfway to Hell?"

Lorne sighed patiently. "I meant England, sugarplum."

Spike shrugged. "Same thing. Either way, I'm not goin' anywhere."

"So I see." Lorne stirred his Sea Breeze thoughtfully and took an experimental sip. "Ugh. Someone obviously forgot to follow the recipe on this one." He tapped the counter to get the bartender's attention. "Listen – Jamie, is it? – it's four _ounces _of grapefruit juice, not four _grapefruits_. Do me a favor and get it right next time, okay?"

"Next time? You planning on staying in town, then?" Spike gave him a searching glance. "If anyone did any taking off, it was you. Thought you'd stay well clear of LA after everything that happened."

"So did I. But what can I say? This town needs me. And I don't have a reason to jaunt off anywhere else, unlike a certain peroxide-loving vampire I happen to be acquainted with."

"What are you on about?" Spike asked, unable to hide his irritation. He had a feeling he knew where this was going, and he didn't like it.

"Oh, come on. We've spent too many hours fighting things of the bad together to do the 'do you know what I know' dance." Lorne's tone was still light, but more serious than it had been before. "I'm talking about the girl, Sparky. The one you've been scribbling ditties about for the past few months."

"Hey," Spike protested, "I do not _scribble ditties_. I write poetry – and how would you know anything about what I've been doing?"

Lorne rolled his eyes. "Well, color me corrected. Point is, you've spent more time thinking about her than Patti LaBelle spends fantasizing about her next hot meal. It's a whole new level of pathetic, and you need to pull it together already."

Although part of him was fighting the urge to punch the green demon as hard as he could, Spike knew that Lorne wasn't saying anything that wasn't true. "Yeah, well," he groused, "it's not like she's dying to see me, is it?"

"Honey, from what I can recollect of the whole you-her-Angel supernatural love triangle saga, she's not even aware of the fact that you're still _alive._" He realized what he'd just said and added, "I mean 'corporeally undead'."

This did not succeed in cheering Spike up at all. "Nah, she would've heard by now."

"Says who?" Lorne drained the rest of his drink and set the glass down on the counter firmly. "Listen, I can see you're enjoying this whole depressed loser scenario you've got going for you – it's certainly the kind of thing any champion who's recently saved the world would be doing." The sarcasm wasn't exactly subtle, but it got his point across.

Now Spike was thoroughly offended. "Hey, you've got no bleedin' right to just barge up like this and tell me what to do."

"Maybe I don't. But if you really love this girl as much as your painfully long and maudlin poems imply that you do, then you'd be on the next ship to Rome."

"Don't you mean the next flight?"

"Uh, no. I mean ship. Like, say for example, the ship that's heading to Italy off the Georgia coast on Tuesday night. The same ship that's captained by a close personal friend of mine, who might be convinced to let you stay in the hull where there's absolutely no sunlight and take you all the way to Rome for free, _if _he's handed this letter of explanation written by yours truly."

Lorne pulled a folded sheet of paper out of the breast pocket of his bright purple suit and put it on the bar counter in front of Spike. "Think about it."

---


End file.
